"Arnold Raced Out the Door..."

A number of late lunches have brought me back into contact with the world of Murder, She Wrote, which has swapped places with Diagnosis Murder in the BBC's daytime schedules. I still find the most intriguing aspect of every episode is the title sequence in which Jessica Fletcher types her latest novel - the only sentence of which I can ever make out is "Arnold raced out the door". For decades now I've wondered just who Arnold is, and why is he racing out of the door? Bearing in mind that JB Fletcher writes mystery novels, it might be safe to assume that he has stumbled on something terrible and rushes out of the room in a state of shock. Perhaps he has walked into his bedroom only to discover his wife dead in bed with the corpse of a Catholic bishop - both horribly murdered with an incense burner. Fearing that, as an Anglican priest, he'll be the chief suspect, he flees, vowing to solve the crime himself through the power of prayer. Then again, maybe he's the one who has committed a heinous crime - after a heavy drinking session he 'followed through' when farting in bed and horribly soiled the sheets in his hotel bedroom. Unable to face the shame of being thought incontinent by hotel staff, he legs it.

Of course, all this presupposes that "Arnold raced out the door" is the complete sentence. I've never been able to make out whether the phrase actually ends with a full stop, or a comma. Maybe what it really reads is "Arnold raced out the door, his trousers on fire", following an unfortunate incident with some curling tongs. Then again, perhaps it's a case of "Arnold raced out the door clutching his severed penis with one hand, whilst trying to stem the flow of blood from his groin with the other". Maybe it was his wife who found him in bed with the Archbishop, and didn't believe his story about pioneering inter-denomination rapprochement. Mind you, bearing in mind the sorts of mysteries that Jessica Fletcher solves every episode, I could be wide of the mark. I mean, I can't really imagine there being an episode where the only clue Angela Lansbury has is a severed penis found outside the diner by Mr Cunningham, sorry, Sheriff Tupper. Especially if the episode also included a scene where the doctor performs microsurgery to reattach the member to its owner. Maybe Arnold is merely racing out of the door because he is late for a bus. A bus full of transsexual strippers threatened by a mysterious one-armed psycho-killer out for revenge...